Fear, What is it Good For

Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 2:13, 19 and Proverbs 19:23

For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water…

Your evil will chastise you, and your apostasy will reprove you. Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the LORD your God; and the fear of me is not in you, declares the Lord God of hosts.

The fear of the LORD leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied; he will not be visited by harm.

When the subject of the fear of the Lord comes up, which it rarely does anymore, those who dare talk about it mostly try to blunt the sharp edge of the language. Because our cultural vision of Jesus is that He is primarily like our best bud or boyfriend, we are inclined towards not wanting to think or talk about the fear of God.

The problem, of course, is the Bible has a lot to say about the fear of God. It also wasn’t all that long ago that it was a part of our cultural language to talk about “A God-fearing man,” as being a positive ideal to aim for.

Because in our present cultural milieu, we are reticent to speak about the fear of God, we resort to saying things like “to fear God just means that we respect Him.” When you hear someone add “just” in, understand they are minimizing the subject. Respect certainly would be an element of the fear of God, but that language softens it to the point of being meaningless.

Having said that, theologians and pastors have always struggled to put a fine point on what it means to fear God. Luther sought to explain it by making a distinction between the “servile” fear of God and the “filal” fear of God. What he meant was that there is a difference between how a servant fears a master and a son fears a father.

I heard John MacArthur once say that the fear of God can be described as a fear of disappointing God.

Augustine tied both kinds of fear together and said that one prepared the place for the other. The dreading fear of God cleared the heart for the love of God and then once love moved in, that kind of fear moved out. “Perfect love casts out fear.”

I won’t do any better in trying to define what the fear of God is than Luther, Augustine, or MacArthur. What I will say is that one way to know if you have the kind of fear of God the Bible promotes and encourages is by what it does in your life. If the kind of fear you have of God drives you away from Him, it is not the kind the Bible encourages. If your fear of God causes you to always move toward Him in repentance and faith, then you have a good kind of fear.

The two verses above from Jeremiah speak of apostasy or forsaking God, the Fountain of Living Waters. It is called evil. Notice that 2:19 puts a fine point on the root of the problem. It says they forsake God because they don’t fear God. So, the holy fear of God pushes us toward grace, the receiving of life freely from Christ as the Fountain of living waters.

Then, notice the proverb I quoted says that the fear of God leads to life and rest. So, however you define the fear of God (the good kind), it is a fear that doesn’t lead to unrest. Instead, it produces the fruit of restfulness and satisfaction.

Fear God. It’s good for you.

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